This guide is for beginners to programmatic advertising.
You may have heard about the Internet of Things and programmatic advertising if you use digital marketing.
If your ad is not placed in the correct place and targeted to the right audience, it will never achieve its full potential. If you have nodded when people say that programmatic advertising has changed the game but you don’t understand why, then you are in luck.
This article explains what programmatic marketing is, explains the best targeting practices, and looks at four brands who are doing it correctly.
What is programmatic marketing?
Software is used to purchase digital advertising. The traditional method involves requests for proposals (RFPs), tenders, quotes, and negotiations. Programmatic buying, however, uses algorithms to buy and sell online display space.
It is a sophisticated way of placing advertising. It uses traffic data, online targeting and scale to drive impressions. This results in a higher ROI for marketers. This can be a great tool for both SMEs as well as global brands, so don’t overlook it because you are a small organization.
It still needs to be a fully automated process. In the past, you had to create insertion orders and ad tags manually. This was a laborious process. Programmatic advertising allows marketers to spend more time optimizing and improving ads, ultimately leading to a successful campaign.
What are the tools and platforms for programmatic advertising?
The programmatic advertising tool is powerful. In 2020, global spending on the platform surpassed $129 billion. This is expected to exceed $150 in 2021. The United States spends the most on programmatic advertising, but the UK is catching up quickly.
Why is programmatic advertising so successful?
It is a success because it is efficient, targeted and scalable.
US marketers spent over $61 billion on programmatic advertising in just two years. This figure is expected to reach $133 billion in 2023. That is 91% of the total digital advertising spend.
According to eMarketer, this growth is a far cry from previous predictions. It is largely due to a rapid recovery in the area following the COVID-19 Pandemic as well as the evolution of Artificial intelligence and how it’s changing marketing.
It is efficient in terms of time and resource use.
John Lincoln, founder and CEO of SEO company Ignite Visibility, explains why programmatic marketing is the new trend in digital marketing:
Programmatic advertising aims to eliminate the old-fashioned, hit or miss campaign design. This system was known for costing marketers a lot of money.”
With programmatic advertising you can now rely on an automated system to determine the best way to spend your ad dollars. You only need to feed the programmatic solution with information about your campaign, audience, and key performance indicators. The algorithm will then do all the work.
Lincoln stated that the system would not only launch a campaign but also monitor your advertising spend in order to identify areas for improvement.
Programmatic advertising can help you succeed if you want to maximize your ad budget, increase your ROI and connect with your audience.
Free Lesson: How to Setup Programmatic Ads
How can programmatic advertising help you?
Let’s look at how to use programmatic advertising in your digital marketing campaigns.
Know your market
Do some research to find out what is involved. Take the time to learn new terms and ideas as a marketer venturing into new advertising areas.
This comprehensive list of programmatic terms will help you to understand your SSP and DSP.
programmatic advertising goal-setting
Setting your goals from the beginning when it comes to digital marketing is crucial. You can do this by using existing data to determine the advertising awareness needed and building an effective strategy to help you determine short-term and long-term objectives.
Remember the human touch
Programmatic advertising is not devoid of human touch because it relies on machines and algorithms. Some platforms offer managed services, such as War Room. Other platforms like Digitallant allow you to manage your programmatic purchasing activities.
You will then need to assign skilled marketers to plan and control your purchases and optimize them. To achieve maximum success, you’ll need to find the right balance between intelligent human intervention and automation. Don’t just rely on an algorithm to get the best results.
Protect your brand against fake news
One of the challenges with programmatic advertising is that it relies on algorithms, which can cause ads to appear in places that need to be more appropriate. For example, sites that spread fake news such as coronavirus conspiracy theory websites.
For this to not happen, make sure that you are constantly updating and monitoring your blacklist. Some platforms let you exclude entire categories of ads from your ad spending, which is a great feature.
A whitelist is another option that is useful if you have a sensitive product. It will provide a list (rather than a blacklist) of sites that are approved. This will limit your ability to reach an audience and may make your ad more expensive. However, it will also ensure that your ad is not associated with any explicit or offensive content.
You should ensure that the agency you hire does everything possible to avoid displaying your ads on low-quality and sensitive websites.
Beware of programmatic advertising fraud
eMarketer estimates that fraud costs digital advertisers between $6.5 billion and $19 billion per year. Advertisers are also concerned about consumer privacy, especially when it comes to mobile and connected TV (CTV).
How can you protect your business from fraud? First, you should compare budget and reach. When it comes to programmatic marketing, marketers have focused on reach. This can leave campaigns vulnerable to bot abuse. Bidding on ad spaces, if a deal seems too good to be real, it probably is. Avoid generating fake traffic by not focusing on the reach of your campaign. Instead, focus on traffic quality.
Your organization can also ensure that ads comply with privacy regulations. According to Pixalate 22% of Apple App Stores, and 9% of Google App Stores, have apps without a privacy policy. This can lead to “dangerous permissions”. Avoid being a brand that is one of these.
What are some examples of good programmatic advertising campaigns? What are some examples of programmatic advertising?
The power of programmatic advertising is demonstrated in these real-world examples.
In 2016, the charity Child Rescue Alert switched to programmatic advertising due to a lack of financial resources.
The charity was able to target users based on the locations where children had gone missing by switching to programmatic advertising.
Director for Funding Ross Miller stated “When we started using outdoor advertising (out-of-home), 50% of the children we appealed were found alive. When we switched to more programmatic out-of-home use, our response rate increased to 70%. People will respond to a relevant message, whether it is based on their location or where they live.
The Economist
The Economist’s award-winning marketing campaign had a massive return on investment.
The ads targeted intellectually curious readers who had spent little time browsing the Economist website.
The results were impressive. According to , eConsultancy, they generated 650,000 prospects and encouraged 3.6 million into action. They also had a 10:1 ROI on a media budget of PS1.2m.
The US saw a 64% increase in awareness and a 22% rise in consideration.
